The blog of the University of Edinburgh's PIR subject area

Why shouldn’t Scottish prisoners get to vote?

On prisoner voting, the UK government is less progressive than most other European countries. Scotland aspires to be a ‘beacon of progressive opinion’, but its government not only acquiesces in the UK position, it has also declined to take the step – permitted it by the UK government – of enfranchising prisoners for the Independence referendum. Judicially challenged on this by three Scottish prisoners in December 2013, the reviewing judge denied their petition, but arguably left a question open.

Lord Glennie found that European rulings enfranchising prisoners for political elections do not apply to referenda because ‘a referendum is typically a one-off event dealing with a single issue’, and ‘[n]or has it anything to do with the choice of the legislature’. A referendum is a less important feature of a democracy than are elections.

What I suggest in my latest blog, though, is that a referendum to decide whether a…